Herbert Huncke Reader

This reader blows away any of Kerouac's work, in my opinion. Huncke was the first to coin the phrase "beat," and also the first to turn on Burroughs to morphine. He's really where Beat started. The book is very interesting, especially in the fact that it is composed mostly of journal-type entries. He writes as he probably spoke: full of slang terms of the time that other authors leave out.

There are few authors I feel everyone should read but no matter who you are Herbert Huncke should be read. He is one of the best storytellers/writers I have had the privilege of reading. His stories of sex, streets, drugs, life and friends bring a humanity to what may be considered by many obscure, degenerate, or just plain disgusting, but Huncke?s stories I believe are non of these. They are filled with love, beauty, pain and always truth. He takes the reader into a world they don?t always want to enter but when the story is finished we are glad we made the journey and had someone like Huncke by our side as a companion.

Herbert Huncke was the true beat. As WS Burroughs wrote, in The Herbert Huncke Reader, "Huncke had adventures and misadventures that were not available to middle-class, comparatively wealthy college people like...me....Huncke had extraordinary experiences that were quite genuine." The sad true is that Huncke was the type that Burroughs wrote about, but didn't like much. He was real. Burroughs was living on trust-fund money for decades (remember that the $200 a month WSB received from family in the 1950s was equal to thousands of dollars a month now-not a bad way to live). Huncke lived the life that others wrote about, but never live. While Burroughs ate steak and drank fine booze, Huncke was still wandering around Times Square. Read the original beat. He makes the other `beat' writers seem like the middle-class dilatants that many of them were. Huncke never fought for the fame, the fortune, and the boys. He was just a "junkie on the prow." This book is truly hip.

I have read a lot of beat literature and was glad to get back to an original source.As a long time associate with William S Burroughs and Jane Vollmer,aka. Mrs. Burroughs,the woman he shot and killed in Mexico it was great to get some insight into their circle of friends. Anyone who aspires to keep a journal of their life and times will dig the outside interpretations that Huncke lays down here.I highly recommend this book to people who are interested in sociology and urban anthropology .This book will turn you on to another world and kick you in the teeth.No holds barred.

Herbert Huncke's off-the-grid desperado lifestyle caused him much discomfort over the years, but the rest of us can only benefit from the writings of a man who rode the rails with the yeggs and, grifters of another era. I once asked Huncke if the Salvation Army stations made you pray before you got food in the old days. "No man, the Sallys were great. They fed your ass, gave you a cot and some clean clothes to replace the rags you walked in with. The Sallys were nothin' but good." If you're seeking inside information on the lean years from a primary source, you can skip Professor Flotsky's long-winded textbooks and go right to The Man.The Huncke reader is more of the same; straight talk from a guy who's fallen, dusted himself off, and climbed right back on the rods for another ride to Wherever.